June 12th — July 6th (The Garage)
This period marked the beginning of a revolution started in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State (AKS), Nigeria.
A web development boot camp held at a location in Uyo, AKS fully driven by passion and commitment to self-development. Starting out with no more than 8 participants but ended with a team of 4 highly passionate individuals who are set to change the face of their State.
They went through a routine that purged their mindsets and imbibed in them a drive to aim for success at all times and not give up on any challenge, rather to face it head on and become a much better person conquering it.
The program, tagged The Garage, is aimed at decentralizing tech knowledge across the country, Nigeria; with its main focus on bringing awareness of technology developments and educating people in these areas as well as driving acquisition of design and programming skills.
The Garage was so named as a reference to the symbolism inadvertently created by a few of the top tech companies that started from a garage — the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, HP, etc.; and today are major players in the tech industry.
The symbolism describes the category of individuals targeted by the program — youths that are still dependent and have a burning passion and an inner drive to change the world around them but do not have the opportunity and/or resources to execute their ideas and actualize their dreams.
The Garage then trains and empowers highly passionate and committed young individuals in design and programming with its current focus on Web and Mobile Development as well as provide a mentor-ship and business support for them as they venture into the tech space.
We will be majorly running a tech boot camp spanning a duration of 3 months at which we will drill participants from ‘What the heck is HTML?’ to ‘I am developer/designer’. Training them with industry practices and driving personal branding, entrepreneurship and relevant skills and qualities that will translate the participants to tech leaders.
This is in order to invariably increase the tech literacy rate across the country and as such encourage like investments and developments in these areas.
We have experienced several technological breakthroughs at different levels in certain parts of the country — Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, etc. However, these developments have caused migration from less tech developed areas to these cities in a bid to strive in the tech business which has caused a certain degradation in the areas left behind. The concentration of tech hubs currently in Lagos State is increasing rapidly and if other states of the country were to experience a fraction of these developments, there would be a major overhaul of the technological processes and innovations in the country coupled with an accelerated economic development.
Education is the bedrock of any development and as such there must be a solid and disruptive educational structure instituted by all concerned parties — government, private and non-governmental organizations and even individuals across all States of the country in order to achieve the level of technological advancements we project to reach as a country.
To get to where we want to be, we need to individually birth the change we want to see.
What do you see?
What are you doing about it?
